The Man Behind Jacinta Price: How Colin Lillie’s Redemption Grounds His Commitment to Faith, Family & Freedom
Colin Lillie — Senator Jacinta Price’s husband — speaks out on faith, family, freedom and fighting cancel culture.
Colin Lillie is a man committed to faith, family and freedom.
In that order.
Speaking with The Daily Declaration, he said it wasn’t always that way.
The talented musician (who is married to rising conservative star Jacinta Price) was born in Scotland. He’s also been in recovery for the past 18 years.
Describing himself as a “Scozy” (Scottish Australian), Lillie testified to falling out with God, falling in with a bad crowd, and using alcohol to self-medicate trauma from an abusive past.
He credits God with righting the ship.
Leaving God and Returning to Christ
Raised in the church, he warmly recalled the experience as giving him time to breathe.
After his family had moved away from that Christian community, Lillie described a time of spiritual searching. Yet “nothing,” he shared, “seemed to ever fit.”
Discussing recovery and rediscovering the “connection with his higher power”, Lillie said, “I may have left God. He never left me.”
Almost two decades sober, he then recounted that reconnecting with Christ didn’t happen overnight. It took time.
While his Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step sponsor was a great man of faith, Lillie says he resisted the Christian concept of surrender as weakness.
It was only when he realised that God was the sole agent responsible for his salvation that Lillie put his broken life completely into God’s hands.
With the sinner’s prayer in hand, Lillie turned his eyes towards the cross and asked God to turn his life around.
This came complete with a desperate moment involving a river and the somewhat comical image of Lillie being kicked awake by an old Indigenous woman.
Recalling his journey, Lillie said he “committed to doing whatever it took to change.”
His big three commitments today are: 1. Sobriety 2. Jacinta 3. Citizenship.
In other words: faith, family and freedom.
Also big on the family list are his sons. “I’m proud of all my boys, Lillie shared, “and what incredible young men they’re becoming.”
One of whom, he said, “became a strong Christian after doing the Alpha Course.”
To this, Lillie asserted, “We need to remind boys and young men that they are very important in building a better tomorrow.”
The Gift of Music and Giving Glory to God
Letting God back into his life also unlocked Lillie’s vocation. With the gift of being sober came the gift of music.
This gift, he explained, gave him a way “to speak truth in a way he never felt able to.”
Talking further about his music career, Lillie told The Daily Declaration that music and testimony are “the best ways to communicate with people.”
As such, he now searches out opportunities to speak at rehabs.
What grounds him is the Word, and a firm conviction that “You never stop learning.”
One of those bigger lessons, he added, was learning that “You cannot stop God from being in your life once you’ve opened your heart to him.”
Adamant, Lillie made it clear that he takes no credit for how far he’s come since then. Nor does he take credit for the family he has today.
All that credit he hands back to God.
“When we follow Christ,” Lillie stated, “we are asked to examine our own hearts.”
The goal is to be a good man, he added. That can only happen “by cultivating a relationship with God.”
Colin on Cancel Culture, Gossip and Lies
Segueing into the messy world of politics, he said, “where everyone is pointing at everyone else, the only way to navigate that is by Christ and his Word.”
“Canberra needs more good people, and fewer people ticking the ‘niceness’ box,” Lillie explained.
Colin then got candid about being cancelled. The gigs dried up after he backed Jacinta during the referendum.
This, and “how people treat one another”, are what drove him to break his silence and share his faith on social media last week.
Note: Slight language warning.
In the 12-minute video published on 15 July, Lillie schooled cancel culture.
Particularly people who are quick to believe, then react to rumour, lies and general gossip.
After owning his own mistakes, Lillie said, “he was tired of watching people who’ve never examined their own behaviour and their own conduct, and investigations into everybody else.”
“I’m tired of whispers being treated as evidence. Of gossip being disguised as concern and second-hand stories being repeated without anybody speaking to the person at the centre of them.”
“I’ve watched others,” Lillie recalled, “tell lies about my family. And I’ve watched others believe those lies without ever coming to us.”
“I’ve watched them add their wee bit of seasoning then serve the whole rotten meal as the truth.”
Then somehow, Lillie argued, “the liars walk away clean, while the person exposing the truth is called angry, unstable, difficult, or dangerous.”
“When I was young, I was raised in church. It was my escape. I could sing. It gave me a sense of safety. Until I cut God from my life.”
“It’s funny, now that I’m older and I’ve reconnected with my higher power”, Lillie stated, “just how I’m rediscovering what I was taught then.”
“Like Proverbs 18:17, which says, ‘The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines them.’”
Slamming cancel culture’s leap before you look, Lillie added, “The first voice may sound confident; that doesn’t make it honest. The first story may sound convincing; that doesn’t make it complete.”
“One hundred people repeating the same nonsense doesn’t make it true.”
Put simply, appearances are not evidence of substance.
Few ask, Lillie continued to argue, about what’s been left out of “carefully edited versions.”
Neither do they ask about “who benefits from the story or why the person being accused was never invited into the room.”
Dropping more wisdom, he said, “A lie doesn’t need to defeat the truth. It only has to arrive first in order to make the truth look suspicious.”
The damage reaches into families. The “sad thing is the people who caused it walk away as if they merely shared an opinion.”
“Families are not collateral damage in somebody else’s pursuit of attention, sympathy, and position.”
“Words, rumours and cowardice have consequences; I’ve had to learn that,” Lillie continued.
Forgiveness
Tapping into the theme of verification via truth vs. error found in 1 John 4, he stated, “People wanting to expose the truth are often the ones cut down because they have disrupted a lie that was working beautifully for somebody else.”
Lillie said he was “sick of the deceit being rewarded. I’m sick of the truth being punished.”
He then added that he was tired of seeing honest people be told to stay quiet, because “honesty makes dishonest people uncomfortable.”
“Some will say forgive and move on — be the bigger person — and I agree,” he affirmed.
“We must forgive, but forgiveness is not permission. Forgiveness isn’t pretending that the wound never happened.”
Lillie followed this with this assertion:
“Forgiveness definitely doesn’t mean handing the knife back to the person who stabbed you because they promise to hold the knife more responsibly next time.”
“Christ said, if your brother or your sister sins against you, rebuke them, and if they repent, forgive them. Notice the order.”
“Name the wrongdoing,” Lillie concluded. “Allow room for repentance, then forgive. Jesus also warned us about staring at the speck in another person’s eye, while not noting the plank in our own.”
“Before you follow the crowd, ask whether the crowd has examined the truth, or is it simply frightened of thinking for itself.”
Standing for a Renewed Australia
Colin Lillie may have had performances cancelled for standing by his star conservative wife, standing up for his convictions, and going into bat for his new country.
This hasn’t stopped the “Scozy” lyricist from pioneering a way through the noise.
He recently collaborated with The Institute of Public Affairs in a patriotic curriculum project for schools titled “This Land”.
Colin’s music can be found on Spotify, iTunes and YouTube.
“This Land” Lyrics
I braved the seven seas lost in time
Seeking out freedom far and wide
With a heart burdened by the night
The spirit yearned to be a bird in flight.
I found myself beneath the southern sky
It taught me the song of goodbye
But I never could run from my mind
So I travelled deeper to find.
I belong to this land
I belong to this land.
I came across this red-hot dusty land
So far and so far from my mother’s hands.
And the people they spoke in different tongues
And I knew this is where I belong.
We belong to this land
We belong to this land
We belong to this land
We belong to this land.
This place we all call home
Sees me as one of its own
And no matter where I travel or how far
The dreaming brings a soul back to its heart.
We belong to this land
We belong to this land
We belong to this land
We belong to this land.
___
Image via screenshot of YouTube.
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